


Subject Seven

by LuluSoBlue



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Experiment April AU, eventual family fluff, for now enjoy a barely emotionally functional teenage girl, who can crush stuff with her mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuluSoBlue/pseuds/LuluSoBlue
Summary: An AU set in a reality where Kirby O'Neil couldn't save his daughter from being taken by the kraang. In the present, the turtles meet and befriend a girl with amazing and dangerous powers, and set out to help her find the answers to why.





	

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame my dear friend Spectrum (aka Werepirechick) for reminding me about Ace in Justice League and the resulting "what if" AU I came up with for April to be just as emotionally devoid and dangerous. Yaaay.

Something on the sidewalk below catches Donnie’s eye, and he blurts out, “Guys, look at _that!”_ as his brothers turn to leave.

It’s a girl. Her form is slumped and she’s wobbling on her feet, like she’s only just learned how to walk. Her skinniness is clear from her arms and legs and through the gown she’s wearing. Her shaven head lolls slightly as she moves, but Donnie can still make out her face. He feels a pang in his heart. She’s the most frail creature he’s ever seen, and yet so beautiful as well.

“Woah.” Mikey leans back around Donnie to look down in her direction. “Humans have a weird fashion sense in real life – OW!”

“That’s not fashion, genius!” Raph quips as Mikey swats his hand away. Leo comes back on Donnie’s other side and frowns.

“I think that’s… a hospital gown?” he thinks aloud. Donnie makes to move down off of the building, but Leo grabs his arm. “What are you doing?”

The ridges on Donnie’s forehead go up. “Um, going down there? Look at her, she might need help.”

“Splinter’s instructions were _very_ _clear_.” Leo straightens up and waves a finger in the air as he repeats said instructions. “We’re supposed to stay away from people.” He hesitates. “And _bathrooms_.”

Donnie shakes his head. “Well I’m going, I mean look at -”

“Uh, guys?” Mikey points back down in the girl’s direction.

A white van pulls up to the sidewalk ahead of her. The girl stops and leans back to look up. The driver of the van climbs out as the back doors swing open, and more men – identical, and just as eerily emotionless as the girl – jump out of the van. The identical men make their way towards her. Donnie reaches for his bo.

“Wait!”

“What?” Donnie snaps as he looks at his brother. But there’s something about Leo’s expression that’s… off. Conflicted. Stuck between fight and flee. It unsettles Donnie enough to lose his edge when he asks, “What is it?”

“We… should stay here.” Leo’s rigid, like he’s struggling to find the words to his answer. “Something’s not right.”

Donnie feels rigid too. And there’s something… off about how the men approach her. Cautious.

He’s finding it difficult to process the scenario, to think. It’s like a wave of tension has washed through his body, and his gut is urging him to run. He jerks his head to Raph and Mikey and can see that they’ve tensed up as well. He looks back down. He wants to help, but he wants to leave. All they can do is watch.

The driver’s hands cling to the doorframe, his whole body shaking, almost convulsing, with fear. The rest of the men seem to move slower, jerkily as they close in on the girl. Her head lolls to the side. Her expression isn’t emotionless anymore. It’s cold, angry. She shakily lifts an arm into the air and stretches out her hand.

And one of the men bends over backwards, completely. There’s a screech that pieces through the night air that Donnie thinks is a scream at first, but the man shows no pain on his face. Not even as he’s lifted into the air and his arms and legs are twisted and crushed at several angles. That’s when it clicks that the screeching is metal.

Suddenly something pink flops out of the man’s stomach. The turtles all react with noises of disgust, Donnie himself feeling his own stomach twist like the man’s body. But then the pink pile moves, and he can see eyes and a mouth and he can hear a shriek as he scrambles back into the van. The body continues to collapse in on itself, skin ripping and tearing to reveal metal and lights and wires, until it’s tightly packed into a mangled ball of limbs and torso and squashed face.

The girl waves her hand and the man-ball is flung into two of its companions at a velocity that sends them – rather, _pieces_ of them – flying at least three blocks down the street.

They nearly graze the driver as they fly past and he lets out a horrified yell. He clambers back into the van and slams the door shut, but the noise gets the girl’s attention. Her eyes are fixed on the two men in front of her as her hand moves again. The van shudders and shakes. Slowly, it rises unsteadily into the air. Donnie can see dents gradually being made from the pressure of whatever force had a hold of it. He predicts how the men will look when the van hits them.

His prediction doesn’t become reality. Over the desperate yells of the driver trapped inside the floating vehicle, an intermittent ringing begins. The angry disappears from the girls face, and Donnie sees how it twists into pain before she buries it in her hands. The van immediately falls back to the ground and bounces as it lands, then from the back a final man steps out. In his hands, the man holds a strange device from which the ringing sounds, and he follows the remaining two men as they continue their approach. She snarls and groans and stumbles back. They grab her as she falls, and she shrieks.

Then Donnie finally realises that whatever sense of fear that had kept him pinned to the roof is gone. She _needs_ help.

He’s on street level before he even knows it, and he hears his brothers follow suit. The girl is being pulled into the van by her captors, still screaming and writhing in agony. Just as Donnie pulls his bo from his holster, there’s another squeal from the ground and suddenly Mikey shouts in surprise. Donnie whips around to see that pink, squishy creature from earlier latched onto Mikey’s face, snarling as he grabs to pull it off. It’s enough distraction for them to be too late. He hears a car door slam and turns back towards the van.

The girls eyes lock with Donnie’s and he’s frozen in place, in time. For what feels like an eternity, it’s only him and the girl. There’s another wave that rolls through him. Pain. Longing. Fury. There’s pain that shoots through him, like pins being slid into his brain and up his spine.

He regains his sense of time and control of his body when the second door is slammed close. The girl is gone from view. The van speeds down the street.

Raph finally pries the pink creature from their brother’s face. He yells at it as he holds it by the tentacles, but releases his grip after it bites down on his hand. Raph curses as the creature flops onto the ground and scurries away, squealing into the darkness of an alley. Leo glares after the van and sheathes his swords. He says they should return home. Tell Splinter what happened.

Throughout everything that follows – retelling their tale to their father, Leo being chosen as their leader, tracking down that driver and discovering more canisters of the ooze that gave them this life – Donnie has one thought that picks and picks and picks and picks away at the back of his mind.

_Set her free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is, the first thing I've properly written and published in... I dunno... ages. I'm sorry it's so brief, but hopefully I'll get around to writing more to this AU soon in future. Let me know if you'd like to see more, that would be a good motivator too.


End file.
